


Lost in the Ruins

by Jyou_no_Sonoko



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loss, Occult, Strong Female Characters, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22086610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jyou_no_Sonoko/pseuds/Jyou_no_Sonoko
Summary: A follow-up to "An Imposition Upon her Tragedy" (archiveofourown.org/chapters/52538674), this piece follows Lilith's mental journey on her first night following Adam's murder. Even with Zelda present, she is cast adrift in the confusion of loss and her lacerating thoughts of personal culpability.
Relationships: Adam Masters/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith, Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	Lost in the Ruins

Lilith rolled the black ring, its enchantment worthless now, from finger to finger, slipping it on and off, clutching it in her fist, hand over hand, so that the ebony was warmed to the core. Just the rigid shape of it in her hands, it was an anchor, a hard physical thing in a world that was rapidly coming apart around her. 

She brought the ring to her face, pressed it against her lips which were taut with the tension in her jaw. Her skull felt as though it were locked in place, bones fused together, because the alternative was that all the flesh would melt from them. She tensed against the certainly real wound in her chest, a gash that, if not for the darkness in her bedroom, would have been visibly glowing with a dark red -- not blood but the leakage of her spirit, pouring out and soaking the bed like magma, searing through it until her body fell limply back into Hell. 

What was this human shape worth, what any solid shape at all, when all it did was cloak the eternal disintegration which would nonetheless devour it in precious little time? This mortal masquerade, her demonic face, even her original pure form straight from the Garden, they were equally pointless.

Her hands became gradually wetter and hotter, as virtually unblinking eyes sent streams of devastation over her whitened knuckles and into the cups of her palms.

Her greatest task was keeping her mind blank, and it took everything that she had to do so. The terror consumed her that she would slip up and an image of Adam would appear: kind, adoring, loyal... wishing nothing more than to accompany her to genuine happiness. That beautiful vision, she knew it would break her. And she didn't want to do that again. Not again. 

The body of Zelda Spellman was a distant presence, lying back to back with her. That company did mean something, most definitely; a cold, empty bed... Lilith could not know what she would do if she had to spend a whole night in it alone. Still, Zelda was young by comparison, and her understanding of the ancient memories Lilith had shared with her would be almost entirely faded by now; no mind which had lived a trifling few hundred years could contain the immense body of experience, of suffering, that lived within Lilith. And neither would she want Zelda to retain it. 

As if thinking about her had caused unrest within the other woman's sleep -- and, in truth, perhaps Lilith's thoughts had that ability -- Zelda shifted, inching backwards to lie more snugly, shape to shape. Unexpectedly, Lilith found herself resenting the intimacy; it wasn't right, it was an insult to his memory. She had no right to be warm. Not after she had failed him so thoroughly. 

How foolish she had been, not to put the pieces together; why would the Dark Lord bring back Stolas out of any sort of magnanimity? That was not His way. His way was harsh lessons, over and over, that only reinforced His control. There was to be no give and take. Only take, and take and take and take. Until her insides felt as though they had been pulled out of her body, stretched entrails wound around His hooves. 

No, resurrecting her familiar would only ever have been self-serving, and yet she had thought nothing of it, treated the ersatz raven as she always had. If she had only been sharper of wit, more cunning, she would have seen through the scheme. But the way her heart had begun to fill up, it made her soft; she could not see through the misty pleasure that was, of course, always going to be too good to be true.

And so she could have only herself to blame. It wasn't Adam, making her weak; it wasn't the Dark Lord, being as He ever had. It was her, Lilith, old as documented time but as short-sighted as any mere mortal. She shouldn't be holding back this pain; she should be experiencing every jagged moment. It was only right.

Careful not to wake Zelda, she edged away and rolled out of bed. She pulled her green silk gown shut against the chill and went over to the corner of the bedroom, where stood a cane-woven laundry hamper. No sooner had she lifted the lid than her heart seized in her chest, and after a moment she continued, dipping in an arm, up to the elbow, and pulling out a shirt from the bottom of the pile. She forced it to her face, breathing in the agony of his scent so that her every cell split open and wept. With that scent came a torrent of memories, and she sat in every single one: every dinner, every touch of the hand, every time she rested her forehead against his chest... Her mind had preserved them in perfect detail, as few other creatures could have. 

As she knelt, countless sabers impaling her through the chest, quaking with the effort of silence, she found she was no longer in touch with the physical plain; the bedroom, the cottage itself, was a vague smear in the vacuum of her existence. Soon she would drift away from it entirely, never to stand on solid ground again. 

But then a bolt of light -- no, a roll of thunder -- no, the pull of a tide, an insistent undertow -- latched onto her. It wrenched her backwards through the void, nauseatingly fast, and like a door suddenly opening and letting the winter inside, she was back on the material plane. Her head hung, overwhelmed with dizziness from the rapid return. Eventually however, the tugging force revealed itself: two hands, firmly placed on each of her shoulders, gripping the silk and the sinew beneath.

"Lilith," came the cultured voice, deeply worried. "Please... don't torture yourself."

Her own voice came shockingly thin, relegated as it had been to the depths of her gut: "I must. It's what I deserve."

The hands moved down her arms, then linked around her chest, and a tickle of breath emerged through lips that were buried in her hair.

"No. You loved him. There is no blame there."

"I should have protected him. He was... only human."

"You _loved_ him, Lilith. In any just world, that would have been enough."

As much as she tried to deny it, Zelda's words were drawing the cold out of her bones. As did the gentle, clasped hands, keeping her heart from exiting her chest. 

Her voice caught: "This has never been a just world. It wasn't built that way. The plans were intentionally drawn up with deep flaws beneath every strut."

"Then perhaps we need to knock it all down. And build a stronger world on the ruins of the first."

Lilith's tone grew sardonic. "Am I really the demon to build a more just world? It's not on any page in my playbook."

Zelda scoffed quietly into Lilith's neck. "Plays are rubbish anyway."

Turning slowly, Adam's clothing dropping from her hands into her lap, Lilith let her cheek rest against Zelda's. She did not know what else to say, but just the feeling of that contact, it was taking the tremour out of her body.

It seemed impossibly whimsical, what Zelda was suggesting. But she let herself dwell in the idea for a little while, enjoy the feeling on her skin. Maybe there _was_ hope. She didn't want to think it, because hope inevitably led to pain, but maybe things didn't always have to stay the same. Just because it was how they'd always been. 

She covered Zelda's hands with her own, held them tightly. It was a dreadful shame that when the morning came, peeling away the sweet disguise of night, she would have to strip the woman of these memories.

But Lilith could keep them. And she could bolster herself with them; take hold of the swords spearing her chest, and arm herself with them.

And then maybe, this time, 

she could win.


End file.
